“He stared down at the dish in front of him, now wiped spotlessly clean. His face was smeared. At some point he must have pressed the plate close to his face and like some grubby alley cat licked the last residue from its surface. But despite such demeaning behaviour he remained baffled. Hidden and obscured within the deceptively simple food he had just eaten, something pure, unadulterated still escaped him. And behind that secret there had to be some craft, there had to be a cook.”

Corran Brooks, celebrity chef and globe-trotting gastronaut, combs the darkest corners of the world for the rarest recipes and foods. But when travelling through Asia and chancing on a meal he cannot decipher, his struggle to unravel its secrets, draws him deeper into a mystery of intrigue and corruption from which he can barely extricate himself. Thriller, adventure and satire, A Dangerous Recipe casts a wry eye over contemporary food culture, with its almost fetishistic pursuit of the rare and obscure.